CHAS, Constructionline and SSIP: what these accreditation schemes actually check

CHAS and Constructionline are two of the better-known accreditation schemes operating under the SSIP (Safety Schemes in Procurement) umbrella — a framework that lets a contractor be assessed once against a common health and safety standard, rather than repeating a full assessment for every client that wants to verify them.

How mutual recognition actually works

SSIP itself isn't a single scheme — it's an umbrella that a number of accreditation bodies, including CHAS and Constructionline, are assessed against and recognised under. The point of mutual recognition is that a subcontractor accredited by one SSIP-recognised scheme shouldn't need to be independently re-assessed from scratch by every client who wants proof of a health and safety baseline. In practice this saves genuinely significant duplicated effort for subcontractors who work across many principal contractors, each of whom would otherwise want their own version of the same underlying checks.

For a principal contractor appointing subcontractors, a current SSIP accreditation is genuinely useful evidence towards demonstrating competence assessment — it shows a baseline of health and safety management has been independently checked. What it doesn't do on its own is confirm a subcontractor is right for a specific, potentially unusual piece of work, or that their RAMS for that particular job is actually sound.

What accreditation doesn't check

It's worth being explicit about the boundary. SSIP accreditation generally verifies that a business has appropriate health and safety policies, risk assessment processes and insurance in place at an organisational level. It doesn't verify that a specific crew turning up to a specific site next Tuesday is right for that particular task, that their RAMS for that job has actually been thought through, or that the individuals on site that day have the training the job requires. Those are the things a principal contractor still has to check directly — accreditation narrows the question, it doesn't answer it.

Checking a scheme is genuinely current

Accreditation status also needs to be checked as current, not assumed — most schemes require annual renewal, and a subcontractor whose accreditation lapsed six months ago is not meaningfully different from one who was never accredited, at least from a compliance standpoint. This matters more than it might sound, because a certificate handed over at the start of a working relationship tends to get filed and never looked at again, while the accreditation behind it quietly lapses. Checking directly with the scheme, rather than trusting a PDF a subcontractor supplied a year ago, is the only way to know for certain.

Which scheme to ask for

Different schemes suit different types of subcontractor and different client requirements — some principal contractors or their clients specify a particular scheme, while others accept any SSIP-recognised accreditation. If there's no specific requirement, what matters more than which named scheme a subcontractor holds is that it's genuinely SSIP-recognised and currently valid — the underlying standard being verified is broadly consistent across recognised schemes, even though the certificates look different.

The assessment process behind the certificate

It's worth understanding roughly what sits behind the certificate, because it makes the evidence more useful to interpret. An SSIP assessment generally involves a subcontractor submitting their health and safety policy, risk assessment procedures, evidence of competence and training arrangements, accident and incident history, and insurance details, which are then reviewed against the scheme's standard. The certificate that results is a summary of a pass against that review — it doesn't come with a breakdown of exactly what was strong or borderline in the underlying submission, which is one more reason it shouldn't be treated as a complete substitute for a principal contractor's own judgement about a specific job.

Individual qualifications versus organisational accreditation

It's worth being clear about a related but distinct thing: individual qualifications like a CSCS card confirm that a specific person has demonstrated a level of health and safety awareness and occupational competence for their trade. SSIP accreditation, by contrast, is held at the level of the subcontractor's business, not the individual. Both matter, and they answer different questions — a subcontractor's business can be SSIP accredited while sending an individual to site whose own card has lapsed, and checking one doesn't tell you anything about the other. A genuinely thorough check looks at both, not just whichever is easier to verify at the gate.

When a client specifies a particular scheme

Some clients, particularly larger organisations or those working in regulated sectors, specify a particular accreditation scheme as a contractual requirement rather than accepting any SSIP-recognised equivalent. Where that's the case, it's worth checking the requirement early in a procurement process rather than after a subcontractor's already been provisionally selected — a subcontractor holding a different, equally valid SSIP scheme may still need to obtain the specifically named one before they can be appointed, and that process isn't instant, so it's better discovered as a planning constraint than as a late scramble.

Common mistakes

• –Treating any health and safety certificate a subcontractor produces as equivalent to genuine SSIP accreditation
• –Filing an accreditation certificate at appointment and never checking whether it's still current later in the relationship
• –Assuming SSIP accreditation covers task-specific competence, when it's really an organisational baseline
• –Not distinguishing between individually held qualifications (like a CSCS card) and organisational SSIP accreditation — both matter, but they answer different questions
• –Insisting on one specific named scheme when any currently valid SSIP-recognised accreditation would meet the genuine requirement
• –Checking a subcontractor's organisational accreditation at the gate but not the individual cards of the people they've sent that day